I’m a little behind so this week I’m linking in our latest podcast episode which actually doesn’t have a whole lot of me, but does get a whole lot of craft time at the end of it. I do need to throw an nsfw tag on here for the amount of swearing mike manages to do in a hours time

Intro:

FTL

Tyler and I discuss the FTL:Faster than light, a new steam game that came out this week. It’s only nine bucks. Go buy it.

Stuff about the Podcast while we wait for Chris

We talk about the new intros, the cover art, and Max Scoville’s Free Ipad Miley Cyrus Nudes.

Idle Banter

River World by Phillip Jose Farmer !Spoilers!

Chris finally shows up
We talk stories across different mediums and Tyler recommends Rising Stars and then proceeds to spoil it pretty thoroughly, so check it out.

I talk about a comic Idea I was playing with and move into a discussion about writing in comics as a medium.

Then we talk Movies, TV, HBO

Part Two

Tyler leaves, we continues talking game of thrones and move into a discussion of chapter formats.
We then talk about characters, their motivations and backgrounds informing their dialog and
actions without resorting to exposition dumping.

We also talk about Microsoft one note for a bit. We then get back to characters and give some our examples from our own writing.

We talk about stories and arcs and a bunch of writing craft related things. There is a discussion of easter eggs, and the difference between theft and homage. Narration in other mediums, Burn Notice
and actors playing characters. We then finish up with a light discussion of Doctor Who Companions.

Like this:

Nolan left his mark on the world in the last half decade by producing a reimagined Batman, one that held the dark roots that had become it’s staple but stripped it of it’s comic book elements and instead went for a more realistic world that previous Batman movies had avoided. What came about in the process was some of the best characters to ever grace the silver screen, and possibly more the entirety of batman continuity. So without further adieu, I present to you the man who broke the Bat.

Now is not the time for jokes, that comes later.

Introductions: show us the man

Those first few moments, the first bit of dialogue, those first five lines are often the make or break point of a character, and they can tell you exactly what level of writer you’er dealing with whether it’s a film, a game or a novel. Nolan introduces Bane as a man who competent, intelligent, physically powerful and incredibly charismatic. Within five minutes of being introduced, he verbally spares with a CIA agent, breaks free of handcuffs, crashes the plane he currently in with one of his own men willing to die in the wreckage. It was beautiful, It not only told us about what Bane could do, but it also painted him in light that made viewer want root for him, it left the audience for the next scene Bane would show up in.

For all the aspiring writers out there, take note of this, especially for the characters whoa aren’t going to be getting the same kind of face time as your antagonist, if it’s going to be twenty pages before the reader here’s or see about your villain, if this supporting character isn’t going to show up in the film for another thirty minutes then leave the audience with a strong impression on just who and what this character is and about. Find out what you character is, and then give them a brief moment to flex, this ins’t the time for subtly, that comes later.

The same joke twice? Your punishment must be more severe

Competence: Give him something to do

One of the better qualities of Nolan’s villains is that they’re not sit in a chair and stroke a cat kind of guys. They get out there get out there and get things done. We like Bane partly because he can take care of business himself, Nolan wrote him to be competent and so when Bane shows up on screen things go his way, making everyone else including Batman look inept. But it’s not just that, it’s the fact that Bane plays a part in his schemes his he is not a hidden villain who sends out lackey’s or one to manipulates things from the shadows. Now that’s not to say your character has to walk across the screen and punch Batman to make him popular. Well loved characters from other franchises and mediums often show their badassery in their subtly, take Vary’s or Little Finger from the George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series, both are characters who work primarily behind the scenes of the actual novels plying their trade. But when they show up on the page, They’re doing important or interesting things that give the sense that guys are competent, capable and action oriented.

The point for our writers to take home is that when you have your man on screen, he needs to be doing something, he needs to be proactive and he needs to be competent. Nobody want to read or watch a character sip tea and powder their face.

Sorry Vary’s you’ll have to do that before you show up

Originality: Be Different

A lot of things make Bane and interesting character, he’s smart, he’s capable, but I think what really set’s him apart was his voice, and the personality that came with it. He’s different from anything Nolan had created before, and most of that difference comes from his presentation, much like the Joker prior, people love Nolan’s because he’s unlike any Bane before him. He’s new, which in most media is hard to do, especially for character that had extensive use and large history before Nolan even thought about him. But Nolan was able to take and make him different. A great deal of this comes from both Hardy the actor who portrayed Bane and the writers who penned his lines as well as Nolan directing. But the truth of it is that they came together and made something old, new again. Thats a key component of writing, taking the things that you love and re-imagining them and writing them in your own style. So the next time your writing for your characters on page make sure they stand out from other characters in your story as as stand out among other characters period. So the next time you magnificent bastard shows up, as what makes him better or different then the ten thousand that have come before him, and if you can’t find a good reason then you may need to give him another once over.

When all of your characters are properly developed, then you have my permission to write

A good introduction, a good display of action and a great sense of originality are just a few of the things that make Bane an amazing character, but without them he would have been left inept and forgotten. So if your future efforts has a character reminiscent of Bane gracing the pages, make sure you know why he was such a success in the first place.

Like this:

Can’t seem to keep a schedule if my life were on the line this past couple of weeks, but without further adieu allow me to present the first chapter of The Legacy of Blaze: The Nightmare by Glenn Rosado. I picked Rosado’s work because of his ability to create an atmosphere that draws you in and then bring in characters that turn you on your head. Aspiring novelist and writers can pick up on how Rosado uses rising and falling suspension through his characters and setting to keep the readers interested. A note to writers, if you have the tension ramped up to eleven all the time then the audience will eventually grow accustomed to it, by switching it up you give the reader reason believe that when you do dial it up to eleven, that the impending doom you dropped down on your protagonist is truly impendingly doomful.

The building was a shadow in the distance. Seth Blaze walked around the building where he was met by a rusty fence, he jumped, grabbed the steel frame at the top, taking care not to grab one of the metal wires sticking out with his arm as he went over, and splashed into a puddle.

He immediately noticed the back door had been left ajar. They couldn’t have found out, he said to himself. He always took extra care in making sure that he wasn’t followed.

Seth moved to the door, his green eyes reflected off the small-rectangular-glass window with the help of the flickering light overhead. He made sure not to make a noise, as if the loud splash wouldn’t have given him away already. If it had, whoever was inside, would have surely made themselves visible by now, he thought. He planted his back against the door while using his left arm to slowly open it, he peeked through, and as he made his way inside…

WACK.

Seth was met with a hand across his face that could have shattered a glass window clean, his eyes shut from the force, all he could see were puffy stars floating around, and somehow, amidst the ringing in his ears, hears a voice echo: “So you think you can just run away from everything?”

Rita Higgins, came into view once the room stopped spinning. Seth might have been pretty good at Kung-Fu, but Rita had always had a knack of showing him up ever since they were little. She stood there with her long blonde hair, hands on her hips and a look that should have burnt a hole through his skull. He could have sworn he saw her eyes turn from blue to red just for an instant. The truth was, Seth had always had a bit of a crush on her ever since they were younger. But it never materialized into anything mushy. Whenever he did something foolish, she would always be there to keep him in line, and for some odd reason that was the one trait that he admired from her more than anything else.

“I decided to follow you from your apartment the other day,” she snapped back. “I thought I would surprise you when you showed up today, to the abandoned warehouse, in the middle of nowhere!” a bit of smoke poured out of her ears just then. The nightmares had been getting so vivid that it had been draining him mentally. He didn’t want her to see him in this state because he wouldn’t hear the end of it if she or Darius knew. So he tried his best to hide it by letting out a sarcastic laugh that only seemed to anger Rita even more. “You surprised me all right.”

“Where have you been?” she said with a look on her face that would melt an ice cream cone in the middle of winter. “Me and Darius have been worried sick. Every time we try visiting you, your uncle always says you’re not in. Why have you been dodging us lately?”

Seth had seen that look a hundred times before. One time when they were younger, six or seven maybe– when Father was around and there was no Empire–he had gone climbing the big oak tree that was planted in his front yard, alone. Attempting to beat her highest point. He put in a considerable amount of effort to find the right branches to latch onto, but he eventually beat it. The problem was that with all of his mind and energy focused on getting past her mark, he had not readily thought of a plan on how he was going to get down. It took him awhile to finally start climbing down, and as he got closer to the ground, one of the branches snapped and he went falling down, breaking his leg in the process. Father had arrived home from work when he found him with his back against the trunk of the old tree, holding his leg. When Rita came to see him later that day, she gave him a look he would not soon forget. A look that said: “That will teach you to go climbing without me.” That same look was being used on him as a weapon, like a child giving her parents the puppy face look to get what she wanted. Rita was trying to get what she wanted– an answer.

“I’ve been really busy, that’s all.” He said trying not to look her in the eye. She knew better though. “I can see that,” she said, looking around the abandoned warehouse. “So this is all the equipment from the school your dad used to train us in?”

“Yup,” he said, “he somehow got it all to this warehouse before… he vanished.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” she said. “You know you can come to us for anything.”

Seth made his way over to one of the heavy bags against the wall. “I wanted to be alone for a while.”

“We were close to your father as well, you know.”

“I know,” he said as he started to jab the bag. “Well, school is going to start back up in a week; you’re at least coming back for that right?” Seth did his best to hide a smile. “Of course,” he replied, “wouldn’t miss it for the world.” But that was a lie of course. Truth was he wasn’t looking forward to it at all. We’re all just going to be working the mines in a couple of years, he said to himself, biting his tongue, so why bother? But Seth knew that he couldn’t win, not against Rita, not when it dealt with issues such as this. “Why don’t you tell me what’s really bothering you?”

Seth stopped punching the bag all of a sudden and looked her in the eyes, “You would laugh at me if I told you.” She locked eyes with him for a moment, which indicated to Seth that she wasn’t much for playing games, and then said, “Try me.”

Seth stared at her for a minute before giving in, finally, spilling out the nightmare he’d been having every day, for the better part of a year, at the hour before dawn; and how it was always the same: ominous dark figures coming into his room to take him away to some dungeon in the middle of nowhere. He found himself somewhat relieved to have all of that weight off his shoulders, but Rita just stood there gazing at him for a second–then let out a hysterical laugh. “Shh,” he said, reminding her of the repercussions if someone were to find out that he had been using this building for his own personal gym. “We aren’t supposed to be here, remember?”

“Oops, sorry,” she said, cupping her hands over her mouth as if her laughs somehow had a mind of their own. “So is that the big problem, a nightmare?”

“See– I knew you would laugh,” Seth snapped while turning back to punish the bag, leaving little dents from his knuckles plastered all over the rubber, “and then you wonder why I’ve been in solitude for the last month.”

“Ok, I’m sorry I can see why that would be a problem. Now it all makes sense. Have you tried seeing someone about it?”

“And have them laugh at me like you just did? No, thanks.”

“Not if you see a–” she paused, “what do you call those doctors that put you to sleep?”

“A hypnotherapist?” he shot back. “Do you know how much they cost? You would have to work three shifts in the mines just to afford one session.”

“Well, then we could try and see if we can dig up any medical books that have some sort of instructions we could use. So we can find out the meaning of the dream and hopefully put an end to them.”

“Where are we going to find that?” he asked. “You know there haven’t been any libraries around since before the purge.”

She walked over to Seth and stopped in front of the bag, before saying, “Leave that part up to me.” Then she cocked her hand back and rocked the bag with a punch.
___

If you enjoyed this snipped of Rosado’s work then take a moment to read the rest of this chapter and the two other chapters that been posted on his blog also named Legacy of Blaze. don’t forget to stop by tomorrow as The Acrhetype releases a new series of articles called Character Focus which will take a moment to look at characters from all over fiction and find out what makes them great, grand or grotesque. Starting with this years hit masked, back breaking villain.

One of the more interesting phenomenon of late that’s made it’s way to the internet is the fascination that some 14-25 year old men seem to have with a show that is meant for small children of the female variety that was produced to sell a line of toys. That’s right friends, this article is all about the magic of friendship so saddle up everypony.

For those of you whom may not have yet heard or are just possily new to the whole internet thing, My Little Pony: Friendship is magic is a cartoon show based of the old line of my little pony toys that have been around since 1982 but have only recently ben pulled into media spotlight via their new cartoon. Also let’s clear something up for those of you who want to rage quit from wordpress because this article is pony related, this is still a storytelling blog and this is still a storytelling article, we’er not going to dive into who is best pony or any other non-sense.

Okay maybe a little non-sense

I’m more interested in what has come together to make ponies so popular among the demographic that normally won’t touch something if it isn’t a dark and gritty rebut of their childhood. In fact I was so interested that in one of my more sleep deprived moments I watched a solid twenty episodes of the show and you know what, it’s not that bad, in fact as far as children’s shows go it was pretty good. In fact I think that there is a lot we can learn from MLP.

Animation

A shows animation is the first thing that a viewer see’s, and much like a person looking at the clothing you wear the viewers start making assumptions about the show from that first glance. For a lot of shows that can be a make or break moment for them, shows like adventure time a regular show have a very particular type of animation and you can tell just from looking at them what the show is going to be like. The same thing also applies to shows who seek a more adult audience who give there shows a much conservative appearance while shows like South Park went for childish look for a show that has a very immature nature.

alright a lot of non-sense

What does this say about MLP, well first off the animation is top notch, it’s bright, it’scartoony, it’scute, but what hooked me mostly is that it’s clean. It was obvious that the shows artist put real work and effort into creating the shows animation instead of treating it as just a 30 min commercial for little girls toys. What can you take away from this as an artist or a writer, MLP uses it’s animation to set the tone for the show, just looking at it is going to make you puke rainbows and leave you wanting more, as an artist you want your art to set the mood of the show or comic well before the characters utter their first words and writers need to be able to set the tone of their books in early descriptions and snippets of their world and make sure that this tone is conveyed in such a professional way.

Format

I think this might be the most interesting part of MLP, or at least the most nostalgic. MLP episodes are all self contained, there is no overarching narrative, there is no broad story line, there just a bunch of anthropomorphic ponies having a different moral adventure each week, and then reminding you exactly what that moral is at the end of each episode. It reminds me of all the old Nickelodeon cartoons like Rugrats, Hey Arnold!, Ah! Real Monsters and every other single piece of nostalgia I can bring to you from your childhood. On a more recent note, the Disney show Phineas and Ferb also follows this format as well as do most TV sitcoms, whether it’s big bang theory or King of Queens. This format isn’t something that went away and is now coming back, we just haven’t seen it with this kind of face for a very long time.

So what makes this format valuable? It’s simple really, or should I say it’s really simple, MLP doesn’t require complex character arcs or a drawn out narrative, Just fit your moral/joke/theme of the day into the episode and move on. It works well for folks who have lot’s of cool ideas and want to get as many of them in as possible , it also fits well with those of you who like to write by the seat of your pants each episode is it’s own little thought with little or no heed to what comes before or what comes next.

This sums up the show pretty well

What can we writers take away from this, well mostly that a series doesn’t need a long complex narrative, sometimes it can just be the six different books about how a boy and his dog find different treasures every week, or about the different planets a group of space marines visit. The point is that people can enjoy simple shorts as well as writers can enjoy writing them.

Theme

The main thing that separates MLP from other form of television that most 14-25 year olds watch is it’s constant theme of light hearted comedy and cute aesthetic design, which stands in opposition to every notion of dark and gritty that has been installed in us since Batman became a thing.

Batman riding a pony, deal with it.

Simply put shows like MLP offer us a refuge from a reality where stories are getting darker and edgier everyday without any sign of stopping, between writers like Christopher Nolan, Steven Moffat and movies like Toy Story 3 and Up even kids shows and movies are pressing toward the gritty realism of everyday life. And maybe, just maybe there’s a part of you that doesn’t want to give up on a world where kids can build roller coasters in there back yard or one were the worst thing that can happen when two groups of people disagree is a really bug food fight. At the end of the day we all want to go back to those days where you knew that every episode Duke would win out over Cobra Commander and the worst thing we had to worry about was Tommy losing his screwdriver, really we all want to believe again in a world where friendship is magic.

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I’d just like to send out an apology to any of my regular and new readers for not having updated this Friday, between moving to a new home and anew job I just haven’t been online for the past two days. However I plan on posting Friday’s article on Monday and then resuming our regular Friday posting schedule on next Friday. Look forward to a very bucking awesome article in a couple of days.

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This weeks feature comes from Smudgedredd and his webcomic Baby Batman, it was chosen because of it’s art style and humor. Showing that one simple change can turn a character from serious to silly when applied appropriately.

If you found this little comic humorous why don’t you go check out the rest of Baby Batman here

The Archetype has come together with Nightmares of a writer to produce a podcast with a mutual friend of ours. We covered multiple games, time travel, history and superpowers. If these things interest you click here and give us a listen.

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The Archetype has recently added two new pages to it’s blog, the first is a submissions page for authors and viewers who would like to have their work or work they believe deserves to be feature on this site can be posted, the second is a writers resource page with links to websites that offer tips and tools for aspiring writers to use.